Imagine you’re travelling to some place in a pleasant mood by a car, the ac’s running and you have some music on . You’re actually travelling in a bubble, The Motorcycle, well it gets you out of the bubble. What fits the best between a man’s legs? A bike of course. But for some reason we have been thrown into a society where bikers are ridiculed, picked on and treated as second hand road citizens. But all of it is worth it when you get on your beast and turn the key. One of the greatest joys of riding is snaking your way through traffic while all of the cars are stuck, from apersonal experience I can tell you that its really hard to resist the urge of waving goodbye to the many faces staring at you through the car windows.
But ofcourse the cons always accompany the pros. Like endless advice on why you should wear a helmet. Imagine going for a quick run to the shop without a helmet and an old guy picks your ear off about how you should always wear a helmet and about how some guy he knew met with an accident(again I speak from personal experience). I saw that he was buying biscuits, what if I’d told him about some guy I knew who died while eating a damn biscuit. We are bikers, we are not stupid, we know that we are travelling at an incredibly high speed on a vehicle that cannot stand upright on its own. IF we have a fall,that little bit of plastic is all that stands between our head and the asphalt on the road. So why wouldn’t we wear a helmet?
On top of this there’s the public notion that any boy who drives a motorcycle is immediately not a "good" boy. On the streets of Kolkata each biker has to take measure of certain things on the road, dogs, cats, toddlers, people talking on phones but what makes Us more wary than any other thing is THE KOLKATA TRAFFIC POLICE. Anytime we spot a white helmet we think to ourselves “Awh Crap, Not now”. Yes it’s true The Police have a spot reserved for us bikers in their hearts. They stop you and ask for your license and when you demand to know why they come up with excuses like “I didn’t like the look of you” or “A bike of this model fled from an accident half hour ago” (again from personal experience). This is just some cock-and-bull to get your papers out, and once your papers are in his hands there are only two possible outcomes :-
1) They fine you.
2) They take a bribe.
We only have one outcome, Pay Money.
Now moving on from worst enemies to best friends, The Best friends of bikers are, No, not other bikers but the street geniuses (also called mechanics) centered around Prince Anwarshah Road crossing and Wellington. They are very genuine people and once you become a regular they treat you like a friend, free ‘chai’and a lively chat are offered while you see your beauty getting fixed. They don’t listen to anything but when you park your bike they take it for a spin, when he comes back he’ll tell you what he thinks is wrong with the bike. Most likely he’ll end with “So bhaiya, did I miss anything?” and a wink. Biking in Kolkata wouldn’t survive without these Mechanics, and you can quote me on that. Parts with minor cracks(or major ones) which most mechanics would "recommend" you to replace, again something which comes with a hefty price tag, but these magicians can actually fix it with scarps of cloth and fevikwik. They do the job so efficiently that you can put your mind at ease about the obvious dangers of gluing a machine together. When you ride out of the road with a smile on your face of having done good work on your beast you’ll feel a pair of eyes looking at you smiling . So that’s about it, if you wanna travel in a bubble with minimal risk buy a car, or if you wanna experience what travel really means bike’s the obvious choice.
RIDE SAFE. RIDE LONG.PEACE.
P.S :- DO NOT FORGET TO SHARE IF YOU HAVE THE SAME PASSION FOR BIKING :D . cheers! Thank you for your time!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR :-
Swagato Basak is a first year B.com student from Bhawanipore Education Society college.When he is not poring over his huge pile of books he prefers to read,write and photograph the grand event called Life. Some of his other articles are as follows :-
http://express5515.blogspot.in/2015/11/kolkata-coming-of-age.html
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